Containers of Salvation RAI 2018 conference abstract

Betwixt and Between Liminality and Marginality: Mind the Gap., 2023

The church porch is a place of rest, shelter and entrance. However in the medieval period it was so much more. A place of informal worship, formal ritual and contract making. The medieval porch has born witness to all the comings and goings of human activity and where it survives the graffiti left behind tells the tale of this activity. This chapter explores these fascinating spaces and proposes an environment that gains power as a place of its own. A liminal space where the intersection of the secular and the divine interact to crate a multi purpose semi-religious place.

Arte Medievale, n. s., 4/1, 2005

British Art Studies 6, 2015

This paper presents a study of the iconographic relationship between medieval church porches and the porches of King Solomon. In so doing it develops Richard Krautheimer’s work to elucidate the inventive capacity of medieval designers when a prototype is known only through written sources not structural actuality. The paper begins by introducing instances where established architectural modes were adopted for the design of a church porch, for example the cloistral attributes of the porch at Great Massingham (Norfolk). It is then argued that, based on formal study of entrance buildings including porch-towers, gatehouses, and ultimately the remarkable double-depth north porch at St Mary Redcliffe, biblical descriptions of Solomon’s forebuildings presented designers with malleable models which afforded inventive architectural interpretation. Access the full article here: http://www.britishartstudies.ac.uk/issues/issue-index/issue-6/inventio-porticus

Physically bound to the written word, Ottonian liturgical manuscript covers had a significantly different relationship to the biblical text than contemporary manuscript illustration. This paper proposes that the iconography of the treasury bindings, in contrast to the illuminations, shared a greater affinity to the spoken words of the mass, while nevertheless speaking to the nature of the contained text. I use the early eleventh-century Easter liturgy of Bamberg Cathedral as a lens through which to view the ways treasury bindings mediated between worshippers and the written word during the performance of the mass. Bamberg serves as an ideal site, as it preserves not only a remarkable nine treasury bindings from the Ottonian period but also a number of sacramentaries, pontificals, and graduals. Taken together, these resources enable a reconstruction of the services during the Easter Triduum. The archaeological and written sources provide evidence of both the performative space of Bamberg cathedral and the actors and audiences who participated in these rituals. KALAMAZOO 2012 PAGE 3 A close analysis of the covers, viewed in tandem with the prayers and lections of the services, reveals that these treasury bindings did not merely illustrate either the spoken or written words, but rather reflected and amplified the aural experience of the Liturgy of the Word for viewers from across the empire.

Paper: Dominican School of Philosophy & Theology, 2022

Styles of churches through the centuries reflect that particular culture’s artistic skills, available materials, and its theological expression of Christ manifesting himself in the world. Roman, Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque styles of architecture all express the ecclesiastical piety of Christians from that time and place. A particularly “Catholic architecture” does not exist per se since the Church as its transcendent reality is not confined to any particular time and place. Church architecture’s departure in the last several decades from providing witness to the sacred is rooted in a post-Enlightenment materialist, reductionist, socialistic anthropology. This philosophical spirit was marked by a general turn toward the subjective–toward a focus on the “inner man” and the respective interpretations of his place within the cosmic order through a hermeneutic that apodictically repudiated the Gospel’s supernatural elements. This embrace of nihilism can be overcome by an architectural return to a consciousness of what Heidegger called a sense of dwelling.

Peregrinations, 2022

Tracing the Jerusalem Code, 2021

It might easily be supposed that the notion of the Heavenly Jerusalem in particular was an early medieval or Romanesque phenomenon in both the visual arts and in theological thinking. Indeed, it is striking that the representation of Jerusalem is so massively present in Romanesque churches and in Romanesque art, while a cursory glance at Gothic art quickly reveals that this presence no longer appears at the same level of intensity. This chapter explores how Heavenly Jerusalem is manifested within what seems to be two distinct epistemological systems of thought which came to influence respectively the Romanesque and the Gothic regime of representation. Liturgical Space Representing Jerusalem Through anagogical readings, everything in the church, along with the building itself, could and was understood as a reference to the Heavenly Jerusalem, into which humankind was to enter after Judgement Day. 1 Everything in and about the church building conceptually pointed towards the Heavenly Jerusalem as the place which humanity should strive towards and long for, no matter if this was made explicit or not. The connection between the church building and the celestial home of humankind was visualized in liturgical objects and pictorial art. Romanesque art certainly was an artistic high point for such visual allusions. In the imagery of the late Middle Ages we also see symbolic architecture used as reference to Jerusalem: censers were still produced in the shape of micro-architecture, and architectural representations of everything from bench-ends to altarpieces could be fashioned in ways which can hardly be understood as alluding to anything other than the celestial

2008

The Antiquaries Journal, 2012

A transcript survives of the oath sworn in 1465 by the lay sacristan of the collegiate church of St Mary at Warwick on the occasion of his taking office. His duties are spelled out in detail, and include the striking requirement that he spend each night in the sacristy for the better security of the treasures. This paper prints the oath and aims to place it in its institutional context. The medieval sacristy at Warwick survives and details of the oath illuminate details of the architecture. Similar first-floor vestries are known elsewhere, and the suggestion is made that some other churches might also have had inhabited sacristies.

Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 2019